Clean
by meyerlemon
Summary: Maybe Kara isn't the most traditionally feminine girl in the fleet, but she's still a girl, and she can't think of much you can say to a girl that's worse than "You stink." --Spoilers for "Colonial Day".


Kara danced with Lee for maybe half a minute before spinning away from him, into Gaius Baltar's embrace.

After she's shimmied into her dress in the little half-hallway off Baltar's quarters, and walked back to her bunk, pretending there's nothing odd about walking the Galactica's corridors in a formal gown at four in the false morning of deep space, she lies in her bunk, draws the curtain, and tries not to think about it.

"It" being what she said, during.

She's moderately successful. She doesn't think of herself whimpering the wrong name, and what that implies, but instead, she thinks of other things, things which are not that much less troubling.

She thinks of how she felt when Lee said that she should maybe wash her uniform jacket.

Maybe Kara isn't the most traditionally feminine girl in the fleet, but she's still a girl, and she can't think of much you can say to a girl that's worse than "You stink."

She's as clean as you can be on the Galactica. Which is not as clean as you'd be, planetside, with access to a bathtub and all the soap a girl could ever want, but she's pretty fracking clean. All the pilots get ripe after a shift in the cockpit. Even Lee Adama, with his magical sweat-absorbing skin.

She doesn't want to think about that. Even when Lee stinks, underneath the day-old sweat is something delicious to her. Sometimes she catches herself inhaling as he passes.

Instead, she thinks of the dress.

Kara found a debutante princess whose parents had bought her a trip on the Cloud Nine as a present for graduating Geminon U without getting knocked up. The princess had a lot of clothes, and not much in the way of sense, or protection. Kara felt sorry for her, and when she swapped the girl the spice plant she'd won at Pyramid for the dress, the princess looked so grateful that Kara, for free, went around to her creepy middle-aged neighbor and told him that if he kept looking at Dayna funny, he would wake up without his balls.

But she doesn't want to think about the dress, either. She doesn't want to think about how long she spent in the head, trying to do something with her hair, digging through her locker for the tiny amount of makeup she carries with her. She doesn't want to think about how she felt, walking to the party. It felt good. And she's learned to distrust good. It never lasts, and the highs make the lows seem a lot deeper.

Then Lee saw her.

She doesn't much want to think about that, either, but she does. Because she remembers how he looked at her, and even the way the night ended can't quite wipe that out.

For a few seconds, she felt the headiest rush this side of pulling six Gs the wrong way into a pack of Raiders. Lee saw her, and in his eyes, she was pretty.

(Kara's used to men lusting after her. She realizes that she's hot. It's the pretty she doesn't get much.)

Lee Adama looked at her, and saw a girl he wanted to dance with. For the time it took them to walk across the dance floor, Kara was nearly giddy with that. And then it sunk in, that this was Lee- Lee, and he wanted to dance with her maybe a little too much, and she didn't even dare look at how she felt about it. Kara's dim sometimes, but not stupid.

She and Lee have a complex thing between them, and have for a long time. But as much as he's a tightass and she's a screw-up, and as much as sometimes she looks at him and doesn't see him as Zak's brother, and even as much as she can't think about that part of it, he's the closest thing she's got a real friend, and she's terrified she'll frak that up.

Sex is easy, Kara believes. It's friendship that's hard.

So when the music changes, too soon, and not soon enough, to a slow dance, and Lee's looking at her the way he is, and he's pulling her a centimeter closer than is okay,Kara knows how this ends.

Andshe grins at him like she always does, and drifts away to Gaius Baltar, who's right there, and malleable, and wants her. And there's enough of a spark between them that...

Kara shakes her head and turns on her side. She doesn't want to think about that part.

She thinks, instead, about those thirty seconds with her hand in Lee's, and his other hand on her back, and how carefully he guided her through the simple steps. She thinks of the old song playing, one that was popular when her mother was young. She thinks of how Lee looked at her.

Like she was clean.

Kara turns her head into the pillow so no one will hear her cry.

...fin...


End file.
